WFAD Annotation - brilliant job, Richard, but surely the warning bell for free form playing warns the musician(s) rather than the audience. It tells him/her/them that the free form has been going on long enough - a lovely Jamesian epigram (or possibly gentle piss-take as we call it here in Cambridgeshire) and in line with the equally good "it'll count the bars/it'll tell you when/the basset horn's coming in again, which knocks nicely at the supposed spontaneity, freedom, improvisation, call it what you will, that so much of jazz is supposed to be about. More seriously, a comment about how free any art form can really be? - dunno, really, but it's a really witty song, and benefits much more from the annotation than analysis (in which case, why on earth I am writing this.......it's been a hard week and it's time for bed).

Jeremy Pymer

Not thinking up tag lines in Fowlmere, South Cambs

PS, any twitchers among MVs? - there was a Hoopoe at the RSPB reserve here a weekend or two ago.

Yes, it's always been my understanding that the bell was to warn the musicians that they were in danger of boring the audience - and Clive's lyric makes that pretty clear. I'm not actually sure, Jeremy (and thanks for the compliment), where you got the idea I didn't mean that.

Great annotations Richard. Can I suggest some additions to Wrist Watch to cover Omega (watchmaker), Incabloc (watch movement), (Rolex) Oyster and (Bulova) Accutron. Happy to have a go myself next weekend if you don't get time before then.

<<Long fingernails. From this we can infer that our guitarist with the lean and hungry looking wrists is either a Spanish or a classical player. Steel-strung guitars are almost invariably – there are a few brave and hardy-handed exceptions – played with a plectrum or with metal or plastic picks clipped over the fingertips. Spanish and classical guitars are picked with the fingernails. If you ever notice someone with closely trimmed nails on one hand and long ones on the other, it’s 10 to 1 that that’s the reason. >>

In rock, there's Ry Cooder and Mark Knopfler who are among the hardy-handed exceptions but the most exceptional one I know (and I've shaken the hand with the nails) is an unknown (relatively) French guitarist called Patrice Meyer who uses his thumb and the four fingers (one per string as far as possible on an instrument with six strings) at a jaw-dropping speed. He says he started playing this way after seeing Paul Simon and naively thought that PS was using all his fingers. Later, he discovered that this was not the case but it was too late to go back. He has a website somewhere where you can see him in action. Makes you want to give up...

Add to those Richard Thompson, who commonly uses a conventional plectrum held between first finger and thumb plus his second, third, and fourth fingers, and the amazing Amos Garrett, *both* of whose hands seem to dance all over the fingerboard like a stride piano player's -- a miracle: don't miss him if you get the chance.

<<Long fingernails. From this we can infer that our guitarist with the lean and hungry looking wrists is either a Spanish or a classical player. Steel-strung guitars are almost invariably – there are a few brave and hardy-handed exceptions – played with a plectrum or with metal or plastic picks clipped over the fingertips. Spanish and classical guitars are picked with the fingernails. If you ever notice someone with closely trimmed nails on one hand and long ones on the other, it’s 10 to 1 that that’s the reason. >>

In rock, there's Ry Cooder and Mark Knopfler who are among the hardy-handed exceptions [...]

I've noticed more acoustic guitarists these days who just use their fingers rather than picks, because many folk clubs and similar venues now have PAs, and players either use an electro-acoustic or a mic and can be heard easily, even when softly plucking the strings. Unlike the old days when you'd have to use picks to be heard at the back of the room (of course there are still venues like this, but not as many as in the 1970s or earlier). Personally I never got on with the picks that clip onto your fingers, although I gather the modern ones are more effective. Does Pete ever use them, btw? I can't remember noticing him using them.

I'd say that Touch Has a Memory is even a better candidate. All you have to do there is say that the title comes from John Keats' What Shall I do to Drive Away (1816? 1819?) the first lines of which run thus:

What can I do to drive away Remembrance from my eyes? for they have seen, Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant Queen! Touch has a memory. O say, love, say, What can I do to kill it and be free In my old liberty?

You might then ask the listener to consider whether touch does have a memory in the way the speaker suggests. That's a big question, but not necessarily one which anyone who is simply writing a glossary needs to deal with.

I've often wondered someone doesn’t have a crack (Oops!!! Freudian slip there!!) at Little Sammy Speedball. I'm sure that there are people out there who, while getting the general drift of that song, would like to know whether or not all those terms for drug-taking were current, and indeed where they originated from.

Surely, there is a brave soul who does not think that admitting to knowing what all of all the euphemisms in the song mean is going to sully his or her reputation, or that it will have Mr Plod and his boys in blue making an early-morning call. On the other hand, you can't be so sure nowadays, can you?

I've often wondered someone doesn’t have a crack (Oops!!! Freudian slip there!!) at Little Sammy Speedball. I'm sure that there are people out there who, while getting the general drift of that song, would like to know whether or not all those terms for drug-taking were current, and indeed where they originated from.

I remember Pete saying that the terms were all genuine, and the Clive had found them all in a book. Honest, guv. This was 30 years ago at my old school, in front of 250 impressionable 11 to 18 year old boys. I understand that some school members were more familiar with the terminology than others - it was certainly all new to me!

I too remember hearing Pete on tour stating that Little Sammy Speedball was written after Clive found a dictionary of West Coast drug terms, which provided the source materials. I think that Pete commented that purists would note that there were East Coast terms included inappropriately.

"Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983), American architect, designer and inventor, was known for his unconventional thinking and visionary ideas, his best known invention probably being the geodesic dome. He might well have designed something original and stylish in the way of watch-cases."

Or maybe Clive could see into the future

Buckminster Fullerine is a recently discovered form of carbon. Sixty atoms of carbon which can be arranged into a ball, constructed like radomes – large spheres built from lots of little triangles; geodesic domes. Like the Epcot domes. And inside the spherical Fullerine molecule, is a tiny vacuum.

Have only just seen your reply to my post of 29/04 re WFAD annotation (lurking in the meantime owing to pre-holiday rush, followed by winding down from pre-holiday rush in the time originally reserved for holiday).

Ought to have put embarrassed smiley on this post but it's not on the drop down list. Took the last sentence in the "free form" section of the annotation totally out of context to mean that the bell is to warn the audience of the imminent advent of free form playing. On re-reading just now, couldn't at first see what the Dickens I had been on about!

I can only plead tiredness, and it being late on a Friday night, and in my defence, refer my learned friend to my contemporaneous allusion to these matters at the end of my original post.

Can I suggest some additions to Wrist Watch to cover Omega (watchmaker), Incabloc (watch movement), (Rolex) Oyster and (Bulova) Accutron.

Geoff (The Speech Painter), a performance poet who is also a watchmaker/mender, and is usually to be seen at Philip Jeays gigs, told us what the "Acutron" bit means - apparently it has a tuning fork in it which somehow makes it very accurate. I'll have to try and get him to post on here and explain all. We told him about the song and I think he's visited the site to get the words, but may not have discovered this forum yet.

The Bulova Accutron used the Swiss watchmakers' patented version of the tuning-fork regulator, popular before the availability of quartz timekeepers. The electro-mechanical tuning fork, vibrating at an audible frequency, required only a single transistor in its sustaining circuit, rather than the complex oscillator/divider integrated circuit necessary with a quartz crystal which typically hums along at 32.768kHz before division to a 1Hz impulse. I seem to remember Bulova advertised widely, perhaps even sponsored programmes, on the offshore commercial radio stations of the 1960s.

The other trademark watches featured in the song featured (I believe) patented shock-resistance mechanisms. No doubt Google reveals all, to anyone interested.

SJB

PS - If anyone (Richard?) cares to add a note on these, I'll be happy to include it.

I just re-read Richard's excellent annotation of Thief In The Night, which mentions record producer John Hammond. In case anyone's interested, he was the subject of R4's Great Lives series on Tuesday (12th Dec). It's still available on "Listen Again" if you go to the BBC Radio website - try this link (if it doesn't work, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/ and navigate to the programme, see under Tuesday on the right hand side of the R4 home page).

Remember this will only be available until next Tuesday (19th Dec 2006), so if you see this after then, tough!

For the benefit of any of you who may have been waiting with bated breath for the horological information discussed above to appear on the Wristwatch annotation, I can now announce that I've finally added it.

Apparently Dizzy Gillespie was once asked why bebop was so hard to play.

He replied: "If the white man can't play it, they can't steal it".

During the 1930s, white banleaders had routionely got rich by adapting jazz musics developed by black players and touring it with white bands, which were more accesptable in pre-war segreagationist America.